


haunts me faithfully from dusk till dawn

by silver_and_exact



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Jokes, Episode Related, Fluff and Angst, Ghosts, Light Angst, M/M, MCR's Helena-vibes, Post-Episode 111: Family Business, Sleeping Beauty Elements, Sleeping Beauty but "Beauty" is a very dead goth guy, The Encroaching Threat of the Apocalypse, author swears too much and thus makes her characters swear too much, canon-typical weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 11:12:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15662073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_and_exact/pseuds/silver_and_exact
Summary: Burning Gerard Keay's page is supposed to put him to rest forever.  But like... what if it doesn't?  Maybe Jon shouldn't have burned the page with that lighter he got from the Archives.Or maybe he should have.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Write the headcanon you want to see in the world!!

It was going on midnight when the vampire hunter and the serial killer’s daughter dropped Jonathan Sims off at his motel, because of course it was. 

The place he was staying at was a decidedly unglamorous roadside motel, a long row of doors with chipped paint, each one leading to room after room of beer-soaked carpeting and fist-sized holes in drywall.  The structure arced around a long-dry fountain in a sort of courtyard, and although it all seemed terribly commonplace, the way the late autumn leaves skittered across the concrete made Jon uneasy.

It probably had something to do with the fact that he’d just stolen a page from a book.  Or maybe it was that he’d just definitively learned that one’s spirit or soul or _whatever_ could be bound to a page in a book.  Regardless, somebody would definitely be around to kill him over it sooner or later.  That is, the Archivist mused darkly, if he was still recognizable by the time they found him.  If he wasn’t some monster, all covered in eyes.

Jon sighed—over the past few months, to his horror, he’d become the type of person who _sighed—_ and riffled through his pockets, his fingers brushing against the paper that would probably double as his death warrant before locating his room key. 

He supposed he ought to burn the page sooner rather than later—who knows, the hunters might track him down and work out a way to stitch it back in if he didn’t get it over with. 

It was strange, seeing two people (he tried not to think of them as “characters,” though it felt that way) from the Institute’s statements like that—three, if you counted Gerard, who was a little… transparent.  Somehow, encountering them was more jarring than running into things like Jane Prentiss or Nikola Orsinov.  These were real people, relatively _normal_ people, all things considered, joking and drinking and road-tripping around America killing eldritch abominations.   

It made Jon feel a little lonely, and a little like he was growing more adept at dealing with waking nightmares than interacting with regular people, which was flat-out depressing.  He should’ve known better than to take the hunters up on their offer of a drink; liquor always made him more inclined to melancholy.

The Archivist resisted another sigh and shouldered open the motel room door.  The door chain clattered behind him, and, once enclosed, he was reminded that the room smelled vaguely like spoiled milk.  Jon thought idly that he should probably leave the motel as soon as possible.  It was terrible, for one, and Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert both knew he was staying there.  He was definitely becoming a monster, because he suspected that the terribleness of the room annoyed him more than the very real threat of being murdered. 

Smirking grimly, Jon extracted the book-page from the inner pocket of his jacket and carried it to the bathroom, reasoning that it would make the most sense to burn it in the sink.  He wasn’t sure why he was bothering with that kind of courtesy—he ought to just light it up right on the putrid shag carpet, regulations be damned.  The motel owners wouldn’t bother to replace the carpeting, and the charred crater would stand as a sort of memorial to Gerard Keay for untold years.  It sounded like the kind of thing the man would appreciate. 

Amused despite his circumstances, Jon flicked open his lighter and brought the flame to the corner of the paper, dropping it in the sink.  He watched as it curled in on itself like a dead spider, the legs drawn tight toward the body.  On a whim, the Archivist lit a cigarette against the rapidly-consuming page and took a drag, his need to exhale the smoke providing a handy justification for another damned sigh, and thinking that this way, Gerry sort of got that cigarette he asked for. 

He was tired of spiders and fire and the apocalypse, and people dying and coming back only to die again. 

Jon looked in the mirror, assessing his appearance with a distant objectivity that unnerved him.  He looked wretched, not like himself at all; he hadn’t been eating or sleeping much, as evidenced by his increasingly-gaunt face and the stark purple semicircles ringing his eyes like he'd been punched.  His dark hair fell limply over the lenses of his glasses, smudging them with grime.  His eyes prickled, possibly a precursor to tears, possibly due to the dual smoke of the paper and cigarette.  Maybe this was just how he looked now, how he was always going to look.  Jon was abruptly seized by a fierce desire to be able to think about normal things, like haircuts and regular hot showers and vacations from work, and whatever else it was that people thought about. 

 

“This isn’t actually hell, right?  I mean, it looks awful, but not like… god-awful,” said a voice, and Jon actually _jumped_ , because Gerard Keay was there, slouching against the door fame. 

In the harsh florescent light, Jon could make out the eye tattoos on each joint, even at the fingertips.  His dyed-black hair shimmered like an oil spill.  He was very tall—taller than Jon, even leaning.

“But I thought I… burned you,” Jon stammered.

“Yeah.  Didn’t work, obviously.  Or not the way I thought it would.  Cigarette?”

Numbly, Jon held out a cigarette to the man, who was still semitransparent and… _flickering_ a little.  Gerard plucked the cigarette from the Archivist’s hand and held it determinedly in the corner of his mouth, and what could Jon do, really, but light it?  It burned red, and he half-smiled, triumphant, but it soon faded, a small thread of smoke rising pitifully from the cigarette’s end.

“Still no lungs.  Figures.”

Gerard flicked the cigarette into the sink contemptuously, eliciting a frown from the Archivist.    

“How… why are you still a—a ghost?”

“I don’t know, okay?  And I’m not a _ghost._   Christ, that’s ridiculous.” 

“Right.  What, er—what are you, then?”

“Not a bloody ghost.”

Jon raised a hand to massage his brow, feeling lightheaded.

“Okay.”

 

The Archivist realized that he was still holding the lighter, and was about to slip it into his pocket when Gerard Keay—Gerry—grabbed his wrist. 

“The fucking _lighter!_   Of course.  It must be _cursed_ or something.  The goddamned Web… spider bullshit...  _fuck_.  Why are you using that thing, anyways?”

Distractedly, Jon mused that ghosts’ hands weren’t cold, exactly, but definitely strange and a bit prickly.It didn’t quite hurt, but it felt… confusing, like the tangible equivalent of static, accompanied by a distant ringing in his ears that sounded faintly like distorted music. 

“My old lighter died,” replied Jon dumbly. 

“Oh my _god._   You didn’t get that from the _Archives,_ did you?”

Jon averted his gaze.  Gerry looked heavenward, as if for guidance, which, under the circumstances, was a bit of a laugh.

“Whatever,” Gerry relented, “you should go to fucking sleep.  You look more dead than I do.”

“You try sleeping on that mattress,” quipped Jon reflexively, feeling a hundred miles away.  He thought hazily that this must be how Elias often felt: like some sinister presence peering in and scrutinizing Jon's every movement.  Elias was probably into that, though, the bastard.

“Don’t think I can sleep.  Never really tried, though.  You know how it goes—a few questions, then it’s back in the book.”

Jon had more or less accepted long ago that his life had completely derailed, and that he now existed only in an episodic string of freak occurrences, but this one was making him particularly dizzy. 

“Hey,” Gerry perked up, “how about you try to dismiss me?”

“I, er… dismiss you.”

“Try it again, this time without the ‘er’.”

“ _I dismiss you,_ ” Jon enunciated testily.  Nothing happened.

“It was worth a try.”  Gerry slumped down on the edge of the bed.  “Oh god, I’m just like my mother.”

“Jesus christ.”

“Nope, just Gerry Keay,” he said humorlessly, and Jon noticed for the first time how tired he looked.

“I think maybe it hurts less, so that’s something.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

The rest of the night was predictably awful.  Jon found it impossible to sleep, and spent most of the night pacing, though he did manage to take a tepid, low-pressure shower.  He let Gerry have the bed, and he was apparently able to sleep, though he tossed and turned and muttered so much that Jon doubted the tattooed man got any real rest. 

Mostly, the Archivist spent the night worrying about the Unknowing, not to mention all of the other assorted cataclysms coming his way.  He assumed that the ancient gorilla pelt was in Gertrude’s storage unit, though he’d be damned if he could figure out what he was supposed to do with it, short of inadvertently leading the circus right to the thing. 

Gerard Keay’s reappearance was something of a distraction, however.  He hadn’t felt right about taking any of the others up on their offers to help, especially Martin.  He had no doubt that the archival assistant would’ve been maimed, possessed, or outright dead several weeks ago—for all Jon complained about Martin, he rather liked him, though he wasn’t about to make it common knowledge, and he didn’t want anything to happen to him. 

But now, it looked like he might be traveling with someone who was already dead.  For all he knew, Gerry could get hurt—even killed—again, though it seemed like less of a possibility than it would with Georgie or Martin.  Plus, up until recently, the guy was being used as a sort of occult encyclopedia, so he must be useful.  And relatively interesting.

And good-looking, he supposed.  In a slightly scary way.

 _Weird relationship with fear_ , Jon thought, and scoffed. 

Before he knew it, he was sleeping in an armchair, feeling vaguely thankful that he didn’t inspect the stains on it too closely.


	3. Chapter 3

“Let’s go to Pittsburgh,” Gerry said, seemingly out of nowhere, as Jon sullenly ate a fast-food breakfast sandwich in his rental car.  He wasn’t about to go to a diner; after all, he couldn’t exactly bring a ghost in, no matter how much Gerry protested against his use of the word, and leaving him in the car would just be rude.  Besides, this felt very American.  

“Why?”

“It might be relevant to… stop the Unknowing?”

_“How?”_

Gerry's shoulders slumped, and he relented.

“Okay, my body’s there.  Maybe we could…?”

“I am not digging up a grave.”

“It's not a grave, it's more of a crypt.  No digging required.  And what if it works?  What if I could… you know, be tangible?”

“You held a cigarette, didn’t you?”

Gerry ran a hand through his hair. 

“You know what I mean.”

Jon felt kind of terrible.  

“Gerry," he said gently, "you’ve been dead for… a while.  Your body’s not going to be…  Well, it probably isn’t exactly what you’d call _pristine_.” 

“I know.  But we could try?”

Jon finished the wretched sandwich and looked at the man, who flickered hopefully, if that was possible.  He sighed.

“Alright, let’s go on your damned side-quest.  I don't have any good leads to follow at the moment, anyways.”


	4. Chapter 4

Allegheny Cemetery sprawled across the horizon in hills and valleys, huge obelisks and crypts towering portentously above crumbling nineteenth-century headstones.  In the darkness, animals darted behind ancient trees at the corners of Jon’s sight, and he consciously worked to suppress visions of mannequins and worm-people and all the hosts of assorted bad shit he was becoming all too accustomed to.

“I think my family's over there,” whispered Gerry, gesturing vaguely toward a copse of graves a few meters away.

“I thought you were from England?”

“American branch.  There’s loads of us.  Like cockroaches.  There was a doctor here who claimed he could... you know.  Fix up the whole cancer thing.”

An immense crypt rose up before them, with “KEAY” emblazoned in foot-high letters above the entrance.  The gaps between the chained and iron-barred door revealed a row of free-standing sarcophagi, which transitioned seamlessly from the black marble floor.  They rested beneath the vaulted ceiling, moonlight spilling in from rose windows set into the roof.  Jon noted that the whole thing had an actual _spire._

“We’ve got… money,” Gerry said distastefully.

“I think I’m starting to understand the goth thing,” said Jon, staring up at the structure.

“My mother was basically a witch, Jon—if you’re just starting to understand it, you haven’t been thinking very hard.”

He paused, and said in a softer voice, “Thanks for doing this.”

“Any time,” Jon said dryly, “but you’re going to have to help me open the lid on that thing.”

The Archivist clipped the chain—which he couldn’t believe he was doing, he felt like he was in a heist film—and the door creaked open, dust filtering down from the lintel.  They stepped in carefully, and the word “desecration” flooded Jon’s mind, insistent.  He shuddered.     

“Which one’s you, then?” he said, breaking the silence, his voice forcibly chipper. 

“The one with the great big ‘Gerard’ on it.  Uh… the _third_ , actually.”

“Really?” said Jon, amused.

“Let’s just open it, alright?”


	5. Chapter 5

Jon didn’t know what he'd been expecting, opening a grave. 

The body wasn’t quite old enough to be a skeleton, but at the same time, nobody was going to be mistaking it for a live person any time soon.  It looked more mummified than decomposed, the moth-eaten tuxedo sagging into the sunken chest.  Withered hands crossed the lapels, and a rather garish signet ring clung loosely to one withered finger, vaguely occult symbols stamped into the gold.  The face looked halfway to becoming a skull, the skin taut, the eyes still mercifully glued shut, though his teeth were bared slightly.  His long hair was still dyed black.

It also smelled _terrible_.  Unfortunately, Jon had encountered enough dead people lately that it was familiar.

“What now?” asked the Archivist, breaking the silence.

“Well, I certainly haven’t aged well.  I guess I’ll… touch it?” Gerry said apprehensively. 

“Go for it.”

The tattooed man stepped forward.

“Jon, if something happens and I… disappear, or something, well… I wanted to say that I would’ve liked to grab a coffee sometime.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” said Jon, his throat suddenly tight.  “You’re paying, though.”

“I doubt my bank account’s still active, but I’ll see what I can do.  Well, goodbye, maybe.”

The goth paused at the side of the sarcophagus, unsure.  Finally, he made a decision, and clasped the skeletal hands resolutely. 

For a moment, nothing happened.  Then, a flash of silver light filled the room, and the molecules of Gerry’s more transparent form started to pull toward the body in the casket, like a film fast-forwarding. 

The horrible, caved-in flesh began to rise and fill out, color flushing across the face, and the ghost completely disappeared, but the man in the casket’s eyes remained closed.

Jon took the body’s pulse—nothing.  He paced around the small room, suddenly painfully alone in a tomb in the dark.  The Archivist didn't want to accept that the universe was really this miserable.  He returned to the casket and shook Gerry by the shoulders, eliciting no reaction.  Dried roses rustled at his sides.  

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jon muttered, and did the last thing he could think of: he kissed him.  His lips were warm.

Gerry gasped and sat up, looking down at himself in alarm.

“Oh my god, what am I _wearing?”_

He held up his hand and cringed, pulling off the ring and throwing it into the casket, where it disappeared amongst the ruffled satin.

“Fucking Keay family bullshit…”

He looked up and did a double-take, as if he’d forgotten Jon was there. 

“Hey,” he whispered.

Jon smiled and held out a hand.

“How about that coffee?  And I've got a few extra cigarettes...”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song "Ghost Story" by Charming Disaster, which is a fine tune.
> 
> Thanks for reading my fic, guys! Comments are infinitely appreciated. Usually I'm a Martin/Jon shipper, because Martin is a delight, but this was too tempting & adorable.


End file.
